The Revenant: A Horror in Dodsville Page 10

  Mrs. Klaus had pointed out the bedrooms we could use and the two that were off limits. The master bedroom was hers, and she didn’t want anyone sleeping there. The other forbidden room was her daughter’s bedroom. I nonchalantly passed by those two and onto the remaining four beyond.

  They were all pretty much the same, except the bedroom at the end of the hall had a round bed. Also, since it was a corner room, it boasted of two windows overlooking two different sides of the yard below. Deciding this was the one I’d be most satisfied with, I limped into it and sat on the bed to ruffle it up a bit, sort of leaving my mark to claim the territory. Something immediately caught my attention from out the left side window, and, recalling the voices from the trip up the staircase, I hurried off the bed and out of sight. I crept up from right angles to it and pulled back the curtain slowly and peered out the slit between the curtain and the sash. Startled, but not enough to run from the room, I was met by the sight of the backside of a gargoyle. They were bigger than they appeared from the lawn below, when I first saw them. Life-sized, in fact. The gargoyle was hunched over, scowling in the direction of the backyard. They sure did make these things to look evil, I thought, and wondered about their origins--though briefly.

  A door slammed from somewhere on the first floor, and I immediately pulled back from the window with my heartbeat rising to a crescendo in my chest. No doubt about my hearing this sound. As my heart slammed against my chest, I could feel my eyes bulge from their sockets in my skull.

  I shook my head, and forced a sigh of relief. The gang had finally returned, that was all.

  “Hello,” I yelled. “I’m up here.” I hobbled out of the bedroom and into the hallway, heading for the stairs. “If anyone wants to give me a hand down these god-awful steps, I would be indeed grateful.”

  No reply.

  And immediately my heart started its ranting again. “This isn’t funny,” I said, not shouting this time. I stopped at the mouth of the staircase. No movement below. “Come on. You’ve proved your point. I’m scared, all right?”

  Again, silence.

  “Shit,” I muttered to myself, and started down the stairway. “Coming down, Jim?” I shouted back up the stairs, as I wanted any possible intruder below to believe I was not alone. “How about giving me a hand down this steps?” As I spoke, I hobbled quickly from one step to the one below it. “Don’t dally up there, Jim. You’re not going to get that bedroom no matter what stunts you try to pull.”

  With five steps to go to the floor, I stopped, and listened intently for any sound. The ticking of the clocks droned on, almost as if laughing at me for my cowardice.

  As I was just about to yell back up to my imaginary friend, the front door burst open and Sly squeezed though, burdened with suitcases and pillows. Tabitha and Melissa followed Sly, carrying only small overnight bags.

  Sly saw me struggling down the last remaining steps and immediately dropped his load on the carpet and ran over to assist me. “I thought you’d have plastered your behind to a chair in the living room,” he said as he slid an arm around my waist. “Better rest the leg for a day or two, at least, before you start fromping around.”

  “It’s only a lousy bruise and a few scrapes, for Christ’s sake,” I replied. I didn’t feel it was the right time to mention the slamming door and the voices. Maybe later when I was only with Sly, and the girls couldn’t overhear. No use getting them frightened on their first night. Anyway, I was already beginning to believe I had only imagined the entire episode.

  A breeze came through an open window somewhere and pushed the front door shut. There is it, I thought to myself, feeling foolish. Just the wind all along. And the voices I heard were probably only the creaking of the hinges.

  “By the way,” I added, beginning to feel much better, and more than a little silly at the same time. “Before someone beats me to it, I already claimed dibs on the farthest bedroom down the hall and to the left.”

  Sly aided me to the couch and set me down, ignoring my complaints that I wasn’t an invalid and could manage just fine on my own. “Anything ghostly happen while we were away?” he asked as he headed back to retrieve the suitcases.

  “Nothing,” I replied, looking down the still darkened hall. “Nothing at all.”

  Melissa and Tabitha followed Sly up to the second floor to fight over the remaining bedrooms. Sly ended up with the one directly across from mine, and the two girls decided it might be prudent to share the bedroom immediately adjacent to Sly’s.

  While they were still upstairs getting everything situated to their liking, I decided to go on a brief excursion down that darkened hallway. The case-of-the-slamming-door still plagued my mind, and I thought I could check the house now without raising any suspicions.

  The hallway led to the kitchen, and after making sure there were no doors to slam in there, I proceeded down the west wing of the mansion. All the doors were open, except for one. Even though I had been out of position when I heard the slamming door up in my bedroom, I still felt that the sound had emanated from down here. Consequently, this must have been the door that shut itself.

  But it was locked.

  I stood back, and scratched the top of my head. “Then the noises couldn’t have come from down here.”

  “What’d you say?”

  I turned sharply to see Tabby standing with her arms on her hips just down the hallway from me.

  “Tabby,” I said, forcing a smile. “What are you doing, sneaking up on me?” I took a deep breath in an attempt to hide the fright I felt upon first hearing her voice. “What are you doing down this wing, anyway?”

  “Looking for you,” she replied, squinting her eyes just a bit to give that look of suspicion. “What I want to know is, why are you down here?” She finished the distance to me and tried opening the door next to me, with the same results I had.

  “What’s in here?” she asked after realizing it was locked.

  “I don’t know,” I replied indignantly. “I was just snooping around a bit. You know, curiosity and all.” I hated lying to her. “This door was the only one closed, and I simply wanted to see what was behind it.”

  “But you said something about noises coming from in there,” she commented, meeting my eyes head on. “Did you hear something?”

  Sly and Melissa appeared at the head of the hallway, spotted us, and headed in our direction.

  “What’s going on?” Sly asked. “Or did you two want to be alone?”

  “Very funny,” Tabitha replied. She poked me in the ribs. “But Stephen did hear something in there, and now he’s not talking.” She motioned to the closed door.

  “Is that true?” Melissa asked, but not at all seriously. She smiled as though this were some sort of gag Tabitha and I were involved in together. At the same time, the look from her eyes said that she thought there might be something romantic brewing between Tabby and me. And that, for some reason, bothered me.

  “As I was just telling Tabitha here, I am down this particular hallway simply to have a look around,” I explained, lying again, and this time hating it even worse. “This door is locked, and curiosity got the better of me. That’s it. Tabby is making something out nothing.”

  All three of them looked at me like they knew I was hiding something. Most likely, though, that was just my telltale heart doing its job on my conscience.

  Sly grabbed the doorknob and tried to open it. Of course, it remained adamant to his touch.

  “Well,” Melissa said, to change the subject. “What are we going to do tonight? Or are we just going to stand down here staring dumbly at a locked door?”

  We proceeded out of the west wing and back into the living room, where we all found a comfortable position in our chairs and simply relaxed for a while. Melissa sat on the sofa with me, and, although she was at the other end, I still felt a bit uncomfortable. Nervous even.

  Sly nodded at me from across the room, as though he could read my thoughts again. Was he right about what he said on our
walk yesterday? Was I actually attracted to Reed’s girlfriend? My god, we just buried him. I couldn’t think of Melissa in those terms. I just wanted to talk to her about Reed, to find out what he was like as an adult. How much he changed. How much he stayed the same. Things along that line. And that was all.

  I propped my bad leg up onto the coffee table in front of the couch again. Walking around had made my joints more flexible, but the throbbing seemed as if it was getting worse. Damn that Beliwitz!

  Melissa let out an exaggerated sigh and snuggled into her corner of the leather couch. ”So,” she said, “when is all this excitement that I was promised so resolutely supposed to begin?”

  “Give it time,” Sly said. “We just arrived. And we’ve had about as much time to prepare as the Americans before the attack at Pearl Harbor.”

  Melissa, I felt, wanted to keep busy to get her mind out of its wash of depression. That was the very reason she was here at the mansion with us in the first place.

  “Think we’ll have any problem with spirits with lost souls wandering around tonight?” Melissa asked after another moment of silence.

  “No,” I replied, almost too quickly, as everyone looked at me. The slamming door and the voices still plagued my thoughts. My mind was diligently trying to shut it out, that it never really happened, but the fact remained that I did hear a door slam and I did hear voices coming from downstairs. And I was beginning to become convinced that it all had something to do with the locked room down the west wing hallway.

  “What time is it, anyway?” Tabitha asked, pulling everyone’s attention away from me. “I’m beginning to feel a bit sleepy.”

  “Almost ten,” I replied. “But we can’t go to bed yet. We have to savor every moment we can.” All three of them looked at me blankly. “When are we ever again going to have the chance to stay in a place like this?”

  “Well,” Tabitha replied, “maybe you guys won’t have another opportunity, but I plan on marrying rich.”

  “That counts me out,” I said. “But, equally important, after this week is up, when are we going to have the chance to be together like this again? I mean, really.”

  A silence followed, each of us wallowing in his or her own thoughts.

  Sly filled his pipe and lit it. The aroma was almost intoxicating. “I have an idea,” he said, after getting his pipe going. “Why don’t we engage in a few ghost stories? Seems only fitting, we being in a reputed haunted house and all.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Sly,” I said, thinking again about the slamming door. I had the distinct feeling that particular door would be on my mind for quite some time. Probably the entire week. That was, unless something more intriguing happened. And that, I was beginning to believe, was a distinct possibility.

  “Tell us about the time you and Reed saw the ghost out at Wickerman’s place,” Tabby suggested, putting me on the spot. “I can still clearly remember you two coming home that evening scared out of your wits. But Reed never did tell me the whole story. And you changed the subject every time I brought it up. What exactly did happen out there?”

  “You and Reed saw a ghost?” Melissa asked, glaring at me.

  “When we were kids,” I replied, trying to make less of it than it actually was. I really did not want to go into the story. And not because it might scare the girls this time either, but because I got frightened every time I talked about it. This particular memory I wanted locked up deep in my subconscious mind, where all bad memories belonged.

  “Oh, you can tell us about it,” Sly said, getting in on the bandwagon, making it unanimous. Then he winked and smiled. That was another reason I didn’t like telling the story--no one ever really believed me.

  “Yea,” Melissa said, sliding a little closer to me on the couch. “Sounds interesting.”

  They all stared at me in silence, waiting for me to begin. It looked as though I wasn’t going to be able to squirm my way out of it this time.

  So, reluctantly, I agreed.

  CHAPTER SEVEN:

  Ghost Story

  “Ready to go?” Reed asked me as he checked his flashlight to make sure it worked properly. He turned it on and off a couple of times, shook it vigorously, and tried again. We didn’t want to be without our flashlights. Not where we were headed.

  The old Wickerman Place was about four miles west of town out on County Trunk DD. The nearest building to it was a tavern, and that was a good mile away. Going past Wickerman’s in the other direction, away from town, one would need to travel a long distance before he ever reached another sign of civilization. The Black Bear National Forest spread over more miles than I cared to even think about. I had heard stories of hunters getting lost and not being found for weeks. One hunter got lost in that forest just last year during deer season, and they still hadn’t found him. Or maybe I should say they hadn’t found the body, because that was that all could be said about him after the passage of so many months.

  We synchronized our watches to exactly eleven o’clock. It was a Saturday night, the middle of a hot August, and Reed and I were headed on another of our famous ghost hunts. On a more demure side, since we both were but a mere ten years old, we needed to sneak away from our houses. Our parents had informed us that they didn't really mind if we checked out the reputed haunted houses of the immediate area, but we were to be back home by nine o’clock. But that rule was simply too stupid to obey, both Reed and I agreed. The sun was barely set by that time, and everyone knew that ghosts and other creepy things of the evening wouldn’t come out until it was good and dark. And quiet.

  We would meet at Reed’s garage every time, and only once, about a year ago, had we gotten caught. And that was only because I tripped over a box of empty aluminum cans, sending them sprawling over the cement floor. Mr. Price was always collecting aluminum cans, even stopping the car at times to pick up a can or two from the side of the road. Julie’s bedroom was right next to the garage, and hearing the racket, she headed outside to investigate. She caught us red-handed on our bikes just as we were heading down the driveway. She broke up our evening plans, and even went so far as to blackmail us both into doing her chores, and other menial tasks, for the following two weeks. We were forced to concede. It was either that or getting grounded for the two weeks if she informed either or both our parents. Not that the grounding would have particularly hurt us too much--we had several schemes to get around that problem--but we didn’t want them knowing we were sneaking out at night. They would have kept a watchful eye on us for the next month at least. That would have ruined a perfectly good summer vacation.

  This would be our ninth outing of the season. We were armed with Kodak Instamatic cameras, a tape recorder, flashlights, and walkie-talkies in case we ever became separated. The previous eight attempts had been resoundingly unsuccessful. Yet, we did pick up, at least we thought we did, a voice once on the tape recorder. But there was simply too much static to understand any words. That had been during our fifth excursion of the summer--to the same haunted house we headed back to tonight: The Wickerman Place.

  “I have everything I need,” I said, after checking one final time. The excitement elevated within me to an all time high, and I could see the same was happening inside of Reed. We both felt like this would be the time . . .

  We packed all our paraphernalia in a canvas bag and stuffed it in the baskets of my bike. I had a morning paper route, which paid for most of the equipment for our expeditions, so I had the baskets that went along with the job.

  Reed opened the small door of the garage, and we wheeled our bikes out into the night air. Julie’s bedroom light was still illuminated--and her window was open. We would have to be expressibly quiet. After pushing our bikes to the end of the driveway, we hopped on them and headed on our merry way.

  The ride would take us about a half an hour, so that would leave us plenty of time before the “Witching Hour” between midnight and one.

  No one had lived in the Wickerman House since
the day Wickerman lost a few too many of the cards off the deck of his sanity and butchered his wife and two children, before hanging himself in one of the upstairs’ closets. Neither Reed nor I knew exactly which closet it was, much to our chagrin, but we would try them all tonight. Quotes from the local townspeople we had dug up in the archives of the newspaper from the time pretty much agreed on the same thing: “He was such a nice man. Everyone thought he was a good husband and father.” Among many others.

  Twenty-one years had passed since the murders/suicide. Late night passers-by allegedly reported seeing “Glowing forms, almost human-like” in the windows. Of course, we had never heard any direct reports of the kind, but, then, we didn’t need them. All we required for an investigation was a simple rumor. And this had all the right ingredients, with the murders and suicide and all.

  We turned off the highway, away from the late night traffic, and headed down the virtually desolate County Truck DD. Another fifteen minutes and we would be there. I pedaled up to Reed, even breaking slightly ahead. I didn’t want to be too much alone on the dark, lonely, deserted road. An occasional set of car lights would have been welcome.

  “What do you think will actually happen if we really do run into the ghost of Wickerman?” I asked, mostly just to engage in conversation. A slight case of the jitters was beginning to build inside me. Even though this feeling arose during every outing, I never could get quite used to it.

  “Nothing to be scared of,” Reed replied. “Ever hear of anyone being killed, or even hurt by a ghost? No. If they tried anything on you, they’d go right through you, being made of ectoplasm.” Reed was the expert on ghosts, between the two of us. He, after all, did the majority of the research. “They try to affect you psychologically,” he added. “Make you go bonkers if you’re not careful.”